I'd definitely have agree with that. I do like the "under your refrigerator" game idea. It's not so much a genre or theme restriction, but more of an art/style restriction. I could think of some humorous things for that.

>set up a schedule
I'd like to do that.. but it is hard to see how my schedule during the day job is going to be so far out.

>a schedule of themes
If people had a schedule, wouldn't they be working on the future contests?
(Not to say that is evil, just making an observation)

>How about having a year or six month long contest that runs in the background?
As though you guys can multitask like an Amiga on just 512kB.

Such a contest is fine for the "regulars", but people pop in all the time. We often get "new faces" when a contest is announced. In addition, I think many of you change ideas so much, and projects, that going too long will result in 3 entries (heck, 50% drop out of uDG!)
>But, with the longer ones, you tend to burn out if you keep at it
Yep, that is what I was trying to say. IMHO, for a LONG contest to be successul, it must have ample rewards at the end.

>When was uDev going to be?
Summer. I need to look at the Japanese holiday schedule.

>he contest schedule needs to be more predictable.
See above... But I agree.

1. Download the "Games Graphics Pack" (link is hidden) and "Games Sounds Pack" (link is hidden). These two downloads have various goodies from my vast collection of game assets.

2. You can use any tool, IDE, library that you want. The final game can be 2D or 3D, but must run on Mac OS X.

3. The official start of this contest is the date/time of this post. It will end (allow the masses to decide)

4. If you wish to compete, (removed until start of contest)

5. Each forum member will be able to cast 4 votes. In addition to the votes you receive, you'll be able to gather "bonuses" if...

* If your game is a "tribute" or an enhanced version of any of the following games, I'll grant you an extra 3 votes:
<list removed> (Why these games? I love 'em, and want to play them again! )

* If your game runs on PowerPC AND Intel Mac OS X, I'll grant you an extra 2 votes.

* If your entry's game assets are 70% from the above downloads, I'll grant you an extra 2 votes. (Whether you qualify is up to the community.)

* If your entry is related to sports, I'll grant you an extra 4 votes. (The Mac is in dire need of sports!)

* If your game is smaller than 1MB, I'll grant you an extra 2 votes.

* If your game isn't about zombies, I'll give you 1,000,000 points.

6. If you have questions, I'll minus 1,000,000 points from you.

7. Since this community has alway promoted education, I'll like to ask for entrants to release their code under an open source license for the benefit of all. (I figure our last contest was closed source, so "you guys owe me one." ) BTW, Don't worry what others may think of your code.

8. Carlos (the Editor-in-Chief), his wife, and two cats have final say in regards to contest rules.

As you might guess, some of those "bonuses" are jokes... and of course I haven't "locked" their values in stone. Basically, with the help of clever people, I would make up a list of say 5 or 10 bonus "awards" that can be picked up.

The idea of the game assets is because with short contests, it is often hard to code and make game assets, so I'd like to promote unqiue uses of the sounds and graphics I have. (There is good variety)

Well, I'm at work now, so I can't flesh this out too much... Hopefully we can come to a good compromise on various aspects of a new mini contest.

Good to see that there will be a uDevGames this year. (certainly answers my hope for an up to 3 month contest this summer ) BTW, do you have any plans for the uDevGames domain? (since it still re-directs to the forums...)

Restricting games to a set of art/sound assets is lame. Not requiring the use of said assets, but giving bonus votes for using them (effectively requiring you to use them) is just as lame. It stifles creativity, and several of us don't need them. Plus, it looks bad to outsiders when all the games look and sound the same. Look at uDG 2003 when half the entries all used the Happy Song from one of the audio packs available at the time. I got sick of that song *real fast*.

For a 21 day game, I would totally have to disagree with bachus. For someone like me who has no clue how to create nice looking assests, that seems like a nice idea. Then you can spend you time honing the game play instead.

If you really wanted to, you could create better assets after the contest is done.

EDIT: After thinking about it, maybe this isn't such a great idea as it would restrict the types of people who would enter.

>Good to see that there will be a uDevGames this year.
It's on the board, but will require the combined effort of everyone -- more so this year than any other year!

>BTW, do you have any plans for the uDevGames domain?
Yes, I'll work on that as soon as I get iDevGames domain sorted out.

>Plus, it looks bad to outsiders when all the games look and sound the same.
Her are my thoughts: Each contest has a different mission. uDevGames is about educating, and giving back to the community, etc. OMG was about getting noticed. Short contests are more to keep people engaged, and to hone their skills. uDG and OMG are contests that reach out beyond our community -- this longer time frame, and the hope for more polish. Short contests like 21DL are more inward contests. "Inward" contests take a great deal of stress off of me. My feeling is that short contests should focus on coding, and small fun games. Some devs might be eager to code, design, compose, etc, but with short time frames, that isn't feasible for everyone.

Anyways, I think providing game assets won't produce 100 Tetris clones. There is a lot of room for creativity. Of course, you are free to go your own route and do everything yourself. Actually, CMG ran a Missile Command contest once. I thought that was a great idea. As you can see how different programmers tackle the same problem... very educational me thinks.

>Then you can spend you time honing the game play instead.
Yes, that is the overall idea.

There seems to be way to much debate every single contest on length of contest, the solution should be this simple:
State the contest entry deadlines well in advance, up to three months in advance, end the silly requirement
of having to only dev in the 90 or 21 or 7 days or whatever, since I know for a fact past winners
have won on entries that started development far earlier than the suggested time period.

Just allow devs to put in whatever time they have for their project and enter whatever contests they
can when they feel their work is ready for such a challenge.

Planning and stating the "themes" ahead of time will allow people to have off the wall new
ideas while they are working toward the most current contest, or when they are in the shower, or whatever.
Say you're working on the zombie theme for two months, and you realise with no time to spare that zombies actually bore you (now that their are dozens of games with zombies), but this game you are working on with another two months of dev would be the ultimate in insect vs picnic people RTS..instead of just shunting the idea to the side you can actually start planning for that particular theme contest and do some idea and code work to that end.

Now say you are a total noob, never done dev, you come along to this site because you hear about the current contest, its already too late for you to even start, but you see a list of themes for upcoming contests, and "Amusement Park Berzerking Qbert Tycoons" catches your imagination, and its eight months off, that gives you a clear idea of where to start and figuring out what you are actually going to try to accomplish, instead of "I'd like to make a MMORPG".

Say you're an artist with no coding skill and you see one of these themes, and you draw up some graphics then post, "Ok i've gone some concept work done, now I need a coder to bring this bad boy to life", instead of not even knowing what the coders want to code, or being told "we have our own ideas go learn to program N00B", or the coders saying "help I need an artist" halfway into a contest deadline.

You really can't go wrong with planning ahead. If the whole planning and stating the plan ahead of time flunks after 18 months, you live, learn and come up with something new based on the experience.

Themes by the way should be kind of esoteric, not "Clone game X", but more like "hopping around the 3D pyramid" (qbert) or "get out of a maze alive"(berzerk,doom,marathon,etc) or "they want to eat you" (pacman, zombies,etc) or "one ring to rule them all" (reactor, gyruss, tempest, etc)...I think you get the idea. But check out photoshop fridays at somethingawful.com and the worth1000.com contest for how a simple theme can explode into the wildest zaniest ideas.